Currently point of sale terminals have become common at such locations as: Carl's Jr., a fast food restaurant, Hughes grocery markets, and ARCO gas stations. To operate these point of sale terminals the user is prompted to insert his or her debit ATM (automatic teller machine) card or credit card into a terminal card reader located at the site of the purchase and then is prompted for his or her PIN (personal identification number) and then the user enters the amount of the purchase or the amount of the purchase may be automatically supplied by the register at the Carl's Jr. or the pump at the ARCO station. If approved by a remote host computer, funds are automatically transferred from the user's account to the merchant's account. Alternately, if the purchase is made with a credit card, then the amount of the purchase is automatically debited to the user's credit card. These point of sale terminals located at a merchant are designed to have a limited function and are convenient to use for that limited function; however, to be more useful it is necessary to have a system and terminal with additional functions.
Various portable terminals are in the prior art; however, they have various limitations. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,050,207 discloses a portable automated teller machine with transducers to couple to a host bank computer via a telephone handset of any phone. It allows the user to securely access bank and bank accounts and to securely effect either interaccount transfers or bill payments; however the device has no alphabetic keyboard, printer or magnetic card reader. U.S. Pat Nos. 4,689,478, 4,652,698, 4,536,647, and 4,454,414 for portable terminals have some of the same limitations.
U.S. Pat No. 4,341,951 has a mechanism for printing on a vendor voucher, but assumes that the terminal is portable and taken to the merchant, which is highly inconvenient and negates the concept of electronic shopping.
The current devices are not convenient or general purpose enough. For example, there is generally no convenient way to enter alphabetic data on these terminals. They are optimized for numeric data such as PIN and amount data. An example, is the popular VERIFONE, which like the devices above has a touch tone type keypad with the ten digits and "*" and "#". As is normally the case on telephones touch tone keypads, letters are associated with each digit. For example, the letters "A", "B" and "C" are associated with the digit "2". It is possible to enter a letter by going into an alphabetic mode and by pressing the "2" key once, twice or thrice to pick a letter to enter; however, this is very inconvenient, and therefore limits the usefulness of these terminals.
The user in the home needs more functions than the typical point of sale terminal or VERIFONE provide. For example, most individuals pay monthly bills by writing checks and mailing or delivering them. It would be desirable to have a terminal in the home that could provide this function in a convenient manner. It would also be desirable to have the ability to pay for purchases immediately upon selecting an item to purchase, for instance an item in a catalog. This would speed delivery for the consumer and provide better cash flow for the merchant. Also, it would be more convenient and secure if the user did not have to give a credit card number directly to an operator or salesperson.